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Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS): Literature review and Italian validation
Author(s) -
Contaldo Maria,
della Vella Fedora,
Raimondo Eugenio,
Minervini Giuseppe,
Buljubasic Merima,
Ogodescu Alexandru,
Sinescu Cosmin,
Serpico Rosario
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of dental hygiene
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.674
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1601-5037
pISSN - 1601-5029
DOI - 10.1111/idh.12451
Subject(s) - medicine , early childhood , oral health , pediatrics , dentistry , psychology , developmental psychology
Objective The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) is a questionnaire to elucidate the relationship between parental perception of the quality of life of their preschool children and their oral health status. Aim of the present work was to validate an Italian ECOHIS version and review the literature. Methods After adapting the original ECOHIS questionnaire from English to Italian (I‐ECOHIS), I‐ECOHIS was administered to parents of children afferent to the Dental Clinic of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli,” regardless of age. Children under 6 years of age underwent anamnestic survey and physical examination, to correlate the dmft index with the ECOHIS score. Results 366 children have come to our observation. I‐ECOHIS was administered to all parents to establish its comprehensibility. 87 children (44 females and 43 males) under 6 years (5.2 ± 1.4 years) underwent dmft evaluation to determine I‐ECOHIS/oral health status correlation. Among the 87 children examined, the higher total score reached was 25/50. ANOVA analysis confirmed statistically significant correlations between ECOHIS score and dmft = 0 vs dmft equal/higher than 4. Conclusion The present pilot study validated the I‐ECOHIS questionnaire and revealed to be a good tool to distinguish children without caries experience from those with a high dmft. However, it was not correlated with the intermediate dmft level, thus confirming the importance of screening for caries.